eMedia: Explore, Create, Collaborate

I think that it is very convenient to have resources that are shared among Utah educators who are in a similar position as you.  A few years ago, I was teaching U.S. History at a junior high school.  Because of the size of our student population, I was the only U.S. History teacher at my school.  Therefore, I didn’t have anyone to PLC with.  In that situation, having an eMedia group for my content area would be helpful because I could get ideas from other teachers who are teaching my subject. 

EMedia groups can help connect me with anyone from the state.  I can get lesson plan ideas.  I am a fairly new school counselor and I sometimes teach classes in the College and Career Awareness classes.  This is a field that I don’t have as much experience with.  Being able to join a group with teachers who are experts in this field is awesome.  I can look at presentations and resources that other people have created without having to do hours of background research myself. 

There are many benefits of being part of emedia groups.  It makes me think of a variety of facebook groups I am on in specific groups to gain insight, knowledge, support groups. etc.  I really like that there are support groups for the education system.  It is always nice to find new ideas, methods, how to improve your teaching or how to teach to students that are more technology savvy.  Personally, we can always improve and learn new methods to do better with parents, students, and our peers.  I look forward to using these groups more specifically for education purposes.  

The advantage of using eMedia groups is that it helps you easily find free lesson plans, resources, and rubrics that apply to you and your teaching situation. These lessons and resources can easily be adapted, remixed, and expanded upon to help you meet your student's needs. Groups can also help you connect with other teachers around the state to collaborate and share lesson plans and resources that will benefit you and your students. I like the idea of being able to create groups that are specific to your district, school, and the subject or grade that you teach. 

When I started this class, I found that it was hard to find resources specific to kindergarten, there wasn't a group for kindergarten so with this assignment I created one! I am excited to be able to connect and possibly collaborate with other kindergarten teachers around the state and add resources that we can use in our classrooms.  Groups, specifically, the kindergarten group will help me build my professional learning network with other kindergarten teachers and resources that will benefit my students.  The resources will also help me because it creates a go-to place for me to find free resources and lesson plans.

I love that you created a kindergarten group! You might try going into each content area hub and exploring their kindergarten collections. This would be a great way to find the resources to share in your new group. In the Elementary ELA hub, there are a lot of early literacy resources too.